Mini Baking Beans product reviews

Miss 2 and I always do a bit of baking for the week ahead on a Sunday, usually consisting of 2 or 3 baked items which could be either cookies, cupcakes, slices, cakes and loaves. Most of the time my partner, Miss 2 and myself will choose something each. This weekend I asked Miss 2 what she wanted to bake and her reply was pink cupcakes with lollies on top of them.

I had purchased these Mini Baking Beans a few weeks back when I saw them down the baking isle at my local countdown thinking that they were a good price and that perhaps they would bake well in the oven and hold there shape and colour unlike normal jelly beans which you find down the confectionery isle since they are called 'baking beans' and that they'd be cute as a decoration on baked goods. Up until now I had completely forgotten about them so searching in my cupboard for a lolly of some description I stumbled across these and marshmallows and asked Miss 2 which ones she wanted to use and the Mini Baking Beans came out on top.

After baking our cupcakes we iced them with pink icing and then Miss 2 decorated them using these jelly beans putting 3 on each one. They looked very cute and tasted even better, although when I turned my back for a second there seemed to have been a lot of Jelly Beans that had dissapeared! Obviously these cupcakes lasted more than a day and unfortunately after a day they didn't look as great as they first did with the colour of the Jelly beans bleeding into the icing a bit which I thought was a shame.

With some of the left over jelly beans I decided to add a few to a couple of the chocolate chip cookies I had also made, I was very dissapointed with the result of these 'baking' beans in the baking, yes they did seem to hold there shape well however they certainly did not keep there colour with the end result being a biscuit with chunks of clear sugary jelly beans in it no colour in sight.

I will stick to using these as a decoration but wouldn't use them in baked goods again as there really not suitable for this.

I saw the mini baking beans when I was looking for something to put on my cupcakes. I paid $3.99 for a packet and thought they were much more expensive than regular jelly beans but was curious to try them for myself. The smaller size made them perfect for decorating the cupcakes with. I put four of them on each cupcake and they looked great and were a hit with the kids. I did find that the next day the colour from the baking beans had run into the icing.

I have also used the baking beans in chocolate chip cookies. I was disappointed to see they melted just as any other lolly would in the oven. I expected jelly beans designed for baking would hold their shape. The children were more than happy to eat the cookies though.

The taste of the baking beans was nice enough but certainly not gourmet as I think of with mini beans. The rest of the packet is safely sitting in the pantry with my other baking ingredients. I am not tempted to go and eat them all as I usually am with lollies. The packet claims to be resealable but the sticker that seals it doesn't hold its stick so I have had to put a clip on the bag.

I think the mini baking beans are something you try but really aren't all they are cracked up to be.

I bought these beans with the intention to use inside cookies...I am an early childhood teacher and put of our weekly programme it to cook with the children and this week they decided to bake cookies and wanted lollies in them, I knew these jelly beans were at the supermarket so thought they would be prefect.

How wrong I could I be?! Oh yes they were easy to mix into the cookie dough and that is where the jelly beans stopped performing at their best....when the cookies came out of the oven the beans that were on the top discoloured, the colour had completely melted off and just left the clear jelly inside left so at first glance the cookies didn't even look appealing...and when it come to eating the children actually asked where the jelly bean cookies were because they couldn't even tell they were the same cookies they had made.

So it was an epic fail using them inside baking cookies and since the children thought I tried to trick them because they couldn't even tell the jelly beans wee in there that I bought another packet and we used to them to decorate our cookies instead...the children iced the cookies and then plonked a few jelly beans on the top. Using them to decorate with instead of baking with is a better use, because they don't melt away!

The jelly beans actually taste okay too, I am a HUGE jelly beans fan as jellybeans are my lolly of choice and I love the sugary taste, but these beans actually taste nicer than the normal jelly beans, they seem smoother with less of a grainy sugar taste and are chewy which is a nice surprise. They also taste fruity, like whatever colour they are they taste, the orange colour tastes like orange flavour, the yellow tastes lemony...just yum!

I will buy these again as I think they are cute but will only use them as a decoration rather than in baking....which limits the uses in baking but only your imagination limits how you will use them to decorate. Also they wouldn't be my first choice to buy but they are reasonably priced and do taste yummy when used to decorate....the children at my work enjoy using them so I know I will be buying more in the future, but probably not for my personal use at home.

I have seen these in the supermarket a few times recently and finally decided to buy some today. I have two little girls having birthdays this week, so I knew they would be appreciated for the daycare birthday cake and as an addition to my eldest's cake next weekend too.

The beans are delicious, fruity flavourful. There are even black jelly beans which are my husband's favourite. These easily sit well on icing. You can melt chocolate and make chocolate freckles with the beans as well. But my main interest in this product was whether it would hold up to heat.

I made a simple brown sugar style cookie and added 3/4 cup of these beans to the recipe. The cookies baked for 9 minutes and the mixture spread into quite good sized discs. The cookies were beautiful and chewy, and they reminded me a little of the stained glass cookies we use to make as a kid.

However, these bean did not hold up to the heat. The outer of the bean had melted and it left holes in the cookies in places. As I took them off the cookie sheet, they were a bit sticky. My fish slice was sticky and needed to be cleaned after each batch. As they cooled on the wire rack, the jelly beans even dripped a bit. So these are great for decorating, and they do taste great melted or not. But if you were looking for a bean that would stay whole even baked into a cookie, this is not the right product.

When you are making cupcakes and cakes for children's birthday parties the more icing and lollies on top of the cupcakes the better, that way you won't end up with a ton of food left at the end of the party. The best thing is as it is a party you can send the hyperactive children home to their own parents at the end of the day!

For my daughters birthday party we used these little baking beans for decorating the top of cupcakes. The children at the party really enjoyed the cupcakes which I had put 3 jellybeans on the top of. It turned an ordinary cupcake into something much more exciting.

The jellybeans them self taste just like any other jelly bean they are nice and sweet and have that soft center, I like that they don't have that gritty sugary texture in the middle you can get with some jelly beans. All the jelly beans have the same flavour they do not change as to the colour from what I noticed like jelly belly jellybeans but these ones say you can bake with them which I haven't yet tried as I was worried they would melt or burn.

Making gluten free mini cupcakes so needed something to go on top that was going to look good and keep it all Gluten Free, I picked up a few items in the baking section of the supermarket looking for something gluten free for the tops. When I came across a little label on a bag of mini baking beans, PERFECT.

Got them home and they are really cute baking beans. They smell yummy, they taste good too, it was one baking bean on the cupcake and one in the mouth. They have all the colours of normal jelly beans and still pack a punch. The best thing I found is the resealable tab on the back, its a white label but you use it to reseal your bag, the instructions on how to use it are very simple.

The kids really loved the little addition on top of their cupcakes I used the Chelsea chocolate icing sugar to hold them onto the cupcake.